August 28, 2013, marked the 50th anniversary of the March on Washington, a civil-rights march that has become a legendary moment in the fight for civil rights in the United States. (Nota bene: Interestingly enough, marches on Washington for civil rights take place every January, and annually...

When I was young I was taught in school that Christians believed the Earth was flat. It was not until Christopher Columbus’s historic journey to the “New World” that the Church was forced to accept this as fact and do away with its false belief. The idea that Christians believed in a flat Earth has been taught in school textbooks,...

Many Catholics squirm at the very mention of the Spanish Inquisition, oftentimes conceding to claims that it was the most brutal time in Church history. But was it really as brutal as it is often described?

If you have never seen the BBC documentary The Myth of the Spanish Inquisition, I highly recommend it. At a little over forty-five minutes, it summarizes the most recent scholarship about the "Black Legend...

Some skeptics claim that the early Christian community was heavily influenced by the surrounding pagan culture of the Roman Empire—that the entire Christian system of belief was cobbled together by cherry-picking teachings from the “competing religions” of the time. A variant of this claim popular among non-Catholic Christians is that the Church started by Jesus Christ remained pure at first, but then slowly adopted pagan beliefs, especially during and after the time of the Emperor...

The claim is often made by “Jesus mythers” that the story of Christ and the liturgical practices of Christians are nothing more than rehashed ancient paganism. The writings of early Christian apologist Justin Martyr are often quoted by mythicists to illustrate how Christians were aware of these parallels and did their best to defend themselves from pagan objetions.

In particular, mythers use one quote from Justin to prove that early Christians plagiarized their liturgical celebration...